


The Deer Herder

by PinkHomeSkillet



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen, There's some swears, and drinking mentions, but other than that should be good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkHomeSkillet/pseuds/PinkHomeSkillet
Summary: Takes place in Plague, just before The Stone City decides to hop itself to Lightning. Cake finds a new job (or, really, a new place to crash), Darius finds some old friends.----Realizing I have a few short things I never posted and wanted to get them out somewhere
Kudos: 2





	The Deer Herder

Sam was the first to arrive at the gate when one of the flashbangs went off.

Technically they were supposed to act as warning lights for extreme magical fluctuations- a powerful mage or object entering the city perhaps, or an attack. Unfortunately they tended to work a little too well and instead of simply glowing, they lit up and exploded. Daniel, like everyone else, had a habit of over making things.

“Very sorry about that,” he started, manifesting as a giant arcane pink eye, waiting for a moment to hear the usual yelp of surprise at suddenly seeing a giant eyeball floating in front of you. He was used to it.

“Son of a dicking bitch!” he heard instead. There was a woman on the ground by some kind of large riding elk judging by the saddle and bags, covering her eyes and yelling. “What the shit?!”

“Very...uh...sorry…” Samuel said, watching her for a moment before his attention turned to the small herd of various deer behind her, and finally to the man beside her. He seemed to be trying to make himself look as small as possible. “Her vision should clear soon. Is there someplace I can direct you?”

The man held up a piece of paper, inked and printed, decorated in scrawled drawings. One of Indrid’s odd fliers. _‘Speak in sign?’_ the man motioned with his hands.

“Most can around here,” Samuel said. He wasn’t as practiced at signing back, though that point was moot at the moment. “May I assume you can hear me?” The man nodded.

“Hang on a damn second,” the woman interrupted, rubbing her eyes a final time before glaring up at him, the color of them half obscured by overgrown hair and a ratty beanie. “Samuel?”

The eye turned to her and narrowed, trying to place how she would know him. Realization, after placing what features he could see under the muck, torn clothing and obvious lack of self care, dawned and the eye widened. “Lady Cele-”

“CAKE,” she snapped.

“Okay...going to assume there’s a story there,” Sam replied. “Somewhere I can dire-” he started when he noticed the deer wandering into the gate and beginning to nibble at the trees and grass. “Cel-Cake, can you get them?”

“Yeah lemme just pack up my deer!” Cake said, throwing her hands out in an annoyed gesture. “Sure we can cram ‘em into a house or whatever weird plague corrals you got. You make ‘em outta bone or something?”

“Oooookkkaayyy,” Sam said, watching her wander off to lecture one animal (‘Tia don’t eat that it’s bad for you’) as the man waved to get his attention. “Yes?” he said as a sigh. This was going to be a day, wasn’t it?

 _‘My apologies, she has been drinking,’_ he signed, and the way he did so- meekly and quickly, partially hidden as though embarrassed to have spoken at all, was far different from the slow confident way of March. It was slightly difficult to keep up with by comparison. _‘In fact I didn’t see her drink any water on the way here. She may need a doctor, if you have one?’_

“That we can do.”

_‘And if I can bother….do you know a man named Hawk?’_

“Hawk,” Sam said flatly, hearing the sound of Cake wandering around and several ungulates both inspecting and being surprised by new things before darting off behind him. Of all the people to ask for. “Yes. That I can help you with.”

\---

“Ari, Ari, Ari,” Hawk said excitedly, carrying the red-haired man in his arms like a toddler holding a cat through the castle, making his way quickly to the kitchen. Etzel hated the new kitchen, and somehow it was the first place that was being renovated. One could say that was because of course everyone wanted food and very especially his cooking so keep the man happy, but everyone knew that it was because Etzel had basically ordered Grenfell to get started on it _now_.

That he had snapped that in front of everyone and Grenfell had immediately stood up to work on it could say a lot about their particular relationship, a thing which everyone noted and then placed as quickly to the back of their minds as possible. Aside from Hawk and Sparks, who did exchange a few jokes and giggles.

Hawk pushed open the doorway. “ARI!” he said, mouth wide open in a grin as his eyes landed on the slender cook. “Look who I found!”

The folded steel blade of the kitchen knife Etzel was holding slammed into the cutting board and went all the way through, stabbed as if into a chest, his bright green eyes staring directly into Hawk’s. That was when Hawk noticed the man sitting at the small round side table by the counter. Katsu.

“I mean…” Hawk said, looking to Katsu, the smaller tundra man in his arms doing a short wave at Etzel. “D...ari..us. Which is this guy’s name. I found Darius.”

“I know you like pretending to be the dumbest man who still somehow found his way out of an egg,” Katsu said, that ice eye flat yet calculating. “But don’t treat me like I am.”

“Pretending?” Hawk asked, mock confused. “Dunno what you’re on about.”

“Don’t mind people not using their real names,” Katsu said, pulling out and lighting a cigarette, feeling the annoyed glance at Etzel for having done so. “Lots of people do, but you two ever gonna tell me how you know each other?” That Hawk looked to Etzel, seeking permission, said that perhaps Grenfell wasn’t the only person who took direction from the man. 

Etzel noted the mood shift, the fact that Katsu had gone from ‘cautiously friendly’ to analyzing the possible danger, annoyed him. “You have five tally marks carved into your forearm,” Etzel said, wiping off his hands with a kitchen towel and looking to Katsu with a slightly disdainful air, the kitchen knife still firmly planted into the counter behind him. “If you tell me what those stand for, then I shall tell you where we met.”

Hawk and Darius tensed as the two men held a minor staring contest, Katsu knowing he’d just been challenged and that he’d lose. “Then we understand each other,” Etzel said coldly after a few moments, walking away and pausing by Hawk. “Put him down.” Hawk did so. “Darius, it's good to see you well. Would you like me to show you around?” Darius nodded quickly, glancing to Katsu and then with an apologetic look to Hawk before following Etzel out the door.

“You know,” Hawk said, looking at the empty space they’d left in the room. “If you two could actually trust one another the tiniest bit, you’d get along pretty damn well.”

“I like Etzel fine,” Katsu said, smoking and staring at the floor for a moment. “But you tell me- is he worth trusting?”

Hawk had never really thought about it that way, and was surprised to silence and mulling it over in his head, turning it like a statue that you saw on a shelf but had never really inspected before. Plans, evidence, alliances- those were all for other people to deal with. He just went with what was in front of him. “Suppose…” Hawk said, face tensing when he realized he couldn’t say definitively either way. Still, he wanted to defend his long time ally without misleading his new one. “When you’re a person with few people on your side, you get used to throwing other people under the cartwheels, you know? He’s gettin’ used to the fact that he don’t have to do it no more, but guess that could still be there. I’ve seen him do good.”

“And the way you’ve said that implies you’ve seen him do a lot of bad.”

“Ain’t we all done some bad, darlin’,” Hawk said with a grin and a wink. “Just need someone like me in the middle of you, keepin’ you straight.”

“Doesn’t sound very straight,” Katsu said with a small smile back.

“Ladies and gents he did it!” Hawk said lifting his hands in the air. “Katsu made a joke! I gotta get the queen and declare a holiday in honor!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Katsu said, getting to his feet, trying to cover his embarrassment at the fuss the other man was making by pretending to study the ground.

“Though if you ain’t kidding...I got two seats, Katsu,” Hawk said. “Katsu.” Katsu looked up to see Hawk with a hand over his mouth and the other pointing at his-um, lower half. “You want top bunk?” Hawk asked, sticking his tongue out and pretending to lick the hand by his mouth.

“Does that ever work?”

“Wait, wait- I got three seats,” Hawk said, ignoring him. He could tell Katsu at least found it funny. “But I’ll settle for two.”


End file.
